April 12 : The outcomes of high-profile diplomatic initiatives, such as the Nuclear Security Summit called by US President Barack Obama in Washington this week which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is to attend, can be uncertain. The reason is that the politics of countries gets in the
way. Also, sometimes such events are driven by domestic political compulsions of hosts. That was said of the London conference on Afghanistan at the end of January and is being said now of the forthcoming nuclear summit. President Obama’s falling stock at home may have improved after the passage of the health care reform bill, but he still needs to shore up his standing before the mid-term election in the US. The two-day affair in Washington is meant to focus energies on how to prevent nuclear bombs — and materials to make them — falling into the wrong hands. But it is far from clear if concrete steps to push the goal can be easily implemented.
The goal, after all, has been with the world since September 11, 2001 when America was attacked by terrorists. It acquired an urgency after the 2004 confession of A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani bomb, that he had been leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. Khan’s career was built on subterfuge and the theft of nuclear materials from the Netherlands. The Americans were in the know of his nefarious activities that would help establish Pakistan as a state with nuclear weapons. Washington’s mysterious silence then begged the question of American seriousness in tackling the clandestine transfer of nuclear materials which the nuclear summit is to discuss. Nevertheless, knowledge about A.Q. Khan’s activities did produce UN Security Council Resolution 1540 on preventing bombs or fissile materials falling into the hands of non-state actors. Not much was heard about this resolution in the intervening years, and we now suddenly have the nuclear summit upon us. Mr Obama has prepared well for the event. Last week he signed the renewal of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia under which both sides will cut their deployed nuclear warheads by 30 per cent in seven years. He also changed the US nuclear doctrine to not attacking with nuclear weapons a country that did not possess the atom bomb. Further, the US leader has re-asserted his belief in a world free of nuclear weapons. That, alas, is the icing on the cake loved by all but wanted by none in the US and Europe. Washington, we know, cannot live up to this high aim. As if to mock President Obama just on this point, Iran has decided to call an international meet of 60 countries in Tehran coming Saturday, just four days after the Washington jamboree, with the slogan of nuclear weapons for no one.
Iran’s new approach (which is inconsistent with its position as a NPT signatory) has been India’s traditional stance, which it is expected to reiterate in Washington even as it supports the legitimate concern of the international community about the spread of nuclear weapons and materials to unauthorised hands if sufficient care is not taken. But New Delhi would do well not to pussyfoot (even as the Americans will, except in the matter of Iran), and to spell out its anxieties in concrete terms. These must take in the general climate of terrorism and instability in Pakistan, and the possibility of non-state actors there gaining access to fissile materials, if not to bombs. India would also do well to be a part of the solution in ensuring that radioactive materials from scientific and medical establishments do not find their way to those who aspire to make the “dirty bomb”. America, on its part, must avoid the impression that a purpose of the summit is to corner Iran.
